Remaking of a Heroine: The Student and the Monk.
At the edge of reality, there stood a tower. It had not been there yesterday -- yesterday this space had been only a field. A bit touched by the Wyld, perhaps, as land near the bordermarches tends to be, but other than the occasional glowing plant or tie-dye colored animal it was as mundane as the earth in which anyone in the village might have grown their food. No longer. The lawgivers arrival had changed it, the touch of solar magic revealing the chaos underneath. Like a skilled trainer coaxing an animal out, he had called the power of the wyld out of seclusion -- telling it it need not fear the order of Creation, that it was his word that ruled the day, and that that word was change. Flowers that blossom only in the death grip of winter grew under a sky made of sapphires -- heartless wild fires who's touch melts only iron and who's smoke turns men to foxes raged out of control, a great crack splitting the earth clear in two. Gravity reversed itself as the azure sky became pooling water, the earth a great domed cealing below. From the holes all around the sky -- the shattered remains of broken buildings that never existed nestled within -- a great flock of bats emerged. Each one was as a mundane bat -- but on their head was mounted a third eye and on their back a third wing ending in a clawed hand, a single tool grasped within as a smith might hold his hammer. Whirling about the center in a vortex of leather and wingbeats, they build the tower from the ground level down, each bat falling dead as it's single task was completed, tumbling up into the sky where it vanished with a splash. By this method, the tower was built, until the last bat chained it to the walls around it and then fell dead, the waypoint still and quiet, save for the sound of water dripping from the sky below. The tower itself was deceptively simple -- from the base, it was naught but a metal gantryway reaching down towards the sky, a disk perched at the end. But from within and above, the true complexity was revealed. A device born of Brigid's Wyld Cauldron and the essence of the Great Maker that flows through all Solar exaltations, it was writ through with devices of magitech design. Up the central shaft hum'ed a great conduit, carrying the raw motes the tower would need to do it's work, while all about it arcane runes shimmered in the metalwork, moving like creature alive. Where the shaft met the base, a thousand tiny vials of glass each held a single white light: a lightning bolt of trapped autocothonian essence, pure and true from the depths of the exaltation it made. Appearing as a spiderweb of white light on the underside of the disk, constantly changing as vials charged or discharged, this assemblage fueled what lay atop the tower, visible from the base only as a corona of white light about the disk. A nexus of crystal spires served as the towers crown -- each one shining a brilliant white with the energy channeling through it. Into the sky below this nexus shot a beam of the purest enlightened essence, focusing as it went until it plunged into the liquid sky, seeming to fade into the fluid beyond, sending up ripples from where it struck. Almost unseen among this grand construction was a simple elevator -- build into the structure from top to base -- to convey those from the ground above to the top below. It was at the entrance to this lift that The Student stood. She wasn't much to look at. Outside the chosen of the gods or faerie, heroism within rarely manifests as beauty without. She was as one might expect a fighting woman to look -- short but strong, with a stocky frame, clad in leather armor that gave her the best mix of freedom of movement and protection. Short, sandy hair of broken threads and an unruly disposition rested atop her head under a bowl helmet, her blue jade crossbow slung over her back. Stepping into the lift cage and shutting the door, she let out an uneasy glance around her as the lift began to descend, wondering yet again just what she was getting herself into. At the time, apprenticing herself to the Solar Monk seemed like a good idea. The idea of a celestial tutor with a vow to honor and obey her was almost too good to be true, and he has promised to make her as grand as any solar -- a paragon of all that a Terrestrial should be. To go where he could not -- to make a name in the world and reform the corrupt Immaculate Order. It had all sounded so grand at the time. But now, for all his grand works, the solar she'd chosen to call Master was starting to seem less shining and more... Crazy. Of course, sure, that was true of all the solars to some extent. You had to take into account that they weren't limited by mortal constraints, and so would take many things to extremes. The Dawn's outgoing heroism, the Eclipse and her many charms, even the Night caste who could only be seen by those who she wished to see her. And at first, the idea that the Monk's dedication to terrestrials and his cause might lead him to the extreme of subordinating himself to a weaker exalt was a seductive prospect, one she thought to turn to her own ends, if not just her training. But as time went on and she learned from the monks teachings, it was not dedication to a cause she found, but to something else -- something he didn't speak of but that she somehow played a part in. He would talk to her in ways full of dedication and passion, but they didn't quite fit her. Like a puzzle piece that almost fits, but still must be pushed in. More and more, she got the impression he was speaking to someone else entirely, seeing another when he looked at her -- someone who's role she took in his life. It was a disturbing thought. Stranger still, the training he gave her was rather...esoteric. She would not deny it's effectiveness -- she was stronger then she had ever been, the blood of the air dragons blowing cold inside her -- but the pattern didn't seem to find a standard Immaculate upbringing of the sort she'd expected. Teaching about the First Age, how to speak and read Old Realm, information about the wyld and the nature of Yu-Shan. And now, what was this? A tower so unnatural it made her head spin? For some aspect of her training that had to be conducted in the wyld? It felt wrong, for all it's grandeur. Perhaps the Dawn would be willing to teach her instead, as soon as she could see him again. This was getting unsettling. The lift cage opened at the top with a loud clatter, letting The Student out onto the towers lowest level, only the sky below her. This level was not contigous, but a patchwork series of tiles seeming floating in empty air. She had to work her way across, towards the center where the Monk told her he would be. But it was not the man in cloth robes and wicker hat she found, but a far stranger creature, the faerie turning to face her with a smile on it's face, it's great tail wrapped about a control panel behind it. The entire level shook slightly, with the energy coursing through it, the sea below starting to bubble and churn as the great lance of light shooting into it intensified. "Who are you?" The Student demanded, her caution now turned to alarm as her crossbow emerged from her back, cocked and ready as she leveled it at the fae before her. "Why, I'm your faerie godmother." The creature answered -- it's voice reassuring and sing-song. "Your father isn't here at the moment, but he'll be along presently. Just some details he had to see too." "My...father?" The Student asked, concerned, thinking back to her father in the crossroads town she hailed from, wondering what he could have to do with all this. "And what in Malfeas do you mean, my faerie godmother? Those are stories fae made up to get children to trust them and wander off into the wyld." "Oh, not one of those old tales, dearie. It's just a descriptive title in my case." The creature answered her, pulling a lever behind it, a section of floor in the distance rearranging itself, tiles vanishing or appearing as need be to regulate the flow of essence through the manse. "I'm a raksha who just happens to be your godmother. It's my job to make sure you get a proper upbringing! And to take care of you in case something terrible should happen to your father, of course." "Why do you keep talking about my father!?" The Student demanded -- angry now, to say nothing of scared. "He has nothing to do with this fucking place!" The faerie before her smiled, giving the slightest shake of her head before answering, her tone one of amusement. "Why, of course he does dearie." She corrected. "He built it." "My father...built this place." She said, her words coming out slow as the horrifying realization hit her. The manse that had merely seemed strange and otherworldly now a house of terrors -- the creation of an Eclipse who was obviously actually insane. And her, trapped here with his faerie ally, while he waited in the wings. She started to back away -- but stumbled as she found nothing but empty air behind her, jumping forward to avoid a plunge. All behind her, the floor tiles had vanished, the route to freedom cut off even as the lift shut it's door and departed without her. Behind it's shaft, a room was revealed -- the Monk stepping out of it to regard her. She turned her crossbow on him -- for all the good it would do -- the weapon wavering between him and the fae. "Let me go!" She demanded, her voice wavering. The Monks expression was nothing so much as hurt -- guilty, torn. All around The Student, cealing tiles faded away until she was left standing on two islands barely the size of her feet. "I'm sorry." The Monk answered, his voice wavering as well -- but with greif instead of fear, his eyes watering. "But I can't. You have no idea how long overdue this has been. Lifetimes and ages. I'm not going to loose you again. Not again. You'll thank me when it's all over. You'll understand." Behind him, the faerie looking back as a light on her control panel blinked, pulling another lever with a cheerful announcement "It's ready!" All around them, the tower suddenly grew still as the beam of light from it's top ceased -- the machinery cooling. Looking down between her feet, The Student could see that where the beam had struck, it struck as a drill. It did not dig through earth or sea or the liquid sky, but through Fate and reality and things beyond mortal imagining, a wound in Creation left where it had struck. A portal to...somewhere, the stuff of pure chaos pouring out from the fissure all around it, turning water to abstract concepts and plants into the wept blood of angels. "Where..." The Student muttered, realizing the gateway lay directly below her. "Where does it go?" The Monk paused for a moment before he answered a solem: "Back home." The Student tensed to leap -- to make one last bid for her freedom, a desperate hope against hope. But the Monk was faster, a shot from his handgun taking her in the kneecap before she could jump. She tumbled backwards, her crossbow flying from her hands as she fell. Her faerie godmother acted only moments later -- the tiles underneath The Students feet vanishing even as more appeared to catch her fallen weapon. She fell -- down into the vortex -- nothing left of her but a jade crossbow, it's handle sprayed with her blood. The Monk waved the floor back into existence, walking up and taking it in his hands, giving it a slow look over as the fae waited for his instructions. "Well." He muttered, rubbing the tears out of his eyes as he looked to the creature across from him. "Nothing to do now but wait." ---- And so, through the portal, The Student tumbled. Things too strange for words formed and died around her as she spun through the chaos, blood drops still pouring from the wound in her leg, floating away in the zero gravity before the raw nature of the wyld unmade them. Exaltation resists chaos where leather and iron do not, and so she tumbled even as her equipment boiled away, the only barrier between her and the madness gone in moments. But the chaos around her was not pure. Even as it chewed at her flesh, boiling away the stuff that made her, she could hear constant factors in the din -- a chorus of legion strength. The voices of 250 raksha, 250 demons, and the half-thousand machines that channeled their power rose up around her, rising and falling like the waves on the sea. Where they fell, the stuff of chaos poured in, boiling away her flesh and bone and soul. Where they rose, they swept in to clean the wound before it could mutate into something new. Like a jewelcutter with his chisel and grinder, they worked to slowly wear away all that she was -- until only the shining exaltation of her soul remained, one thing about her that neither raksha nor demon nor solar could recreate. Though she knew little of what happened about her, her exaltation knew. Like the power to attune items or channel essence, knowledge of shaping and divine right came with the second breath -- telling The Student what her fate would soon be. The fate of the Shaped, those who have lost all that they are, to be given a new existence by their shaper. "You can't do this!" She wailed into the madness. "Gaia is stronger than you! Her chosen cannot be remade so!" "You are wrong, little dragon." The chorus answered her, all thousand voices speaking at once, shaking her tiny frame like a leaf on the wind. "Your Gaia sleeps under Incarnate treachery -- she has no power here. But for willpower and essence and the free will at the core of all exalts, yours is the power to guide yourself. Three times, this will be done, and then your soul is ours." "I...I have been shot." She answered first, white hot pain crystallizing her will. No sooner did she speak the words than the voices quieted, and the waves of chaos washed away her legs entirely, only the bullet wound remaining as a shining dot of light -- a fact of her existence, inviolate and fixed. "Yea." The chorus spoke as it rose again. "It is done." "I'm a good person! A hero of Creation! I serve no evil!" She shouted, louder and stronger now, the nose pouring forth from her soul rather than her lungs, her will making the very proto-world around her change to her wishes, commanding it to bring the noise forth. As she spoke, the chorus receded, and the stuff of chaos washed over her torso, washing it away entirety. Nothing remained but her noble heart -- a pulsing point of light that shone with her every heroic thought. "Yea." The chorus spoke as it rose again. "Twice, it is done." "I will never forget who I am." She muttered last, quiet but resolved, the chaos washing over her one last time. Only her exaltation remaining, surrounded by her three defined traits -- four points of light pulsing in the chaos around them. As they shone, the chorus rose once again, and the chaos started to fade. In it's place was knit a new order, a world that formed around this exaltation, shaping it, giving it a new body and reality to call home. "Yea." The chorus spoke as this world formed, it's voice fading away as the shaping process concluded. "Three times, it is done. But while you will never forget, you are not shielded from change. Keeping memories safe is a simple thing, little dragon, but deciding who you are is rather more complicated." The voices faded in time, as did the chaos -- the din of raw change replaced by the gentle rustle of wind and the clinking of chimes. Category:CotUS Category:Grey Wolf